This is an hypothesis, but not, I think, an unlikely hypothesis. Of what, then, did the May-game, as it took shape in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, consist? Primarily, no doubt, of a _quête_ or ‘gaderyng.’ In many places this became a parochial, or even a municipal, affair. In 1498 the corporation of Wells possessed moneys ‘_provenientes ante hoc tempus de Robynhode_[590].’ Elsewhere the churchwardens paid the expenses of the feast and accounted for the receipts in the annual parish budget[591]. There are many entries concerning the May-game in the accounts of Kingston-on-Thames during some half a century. In 1506 it is recorded that ‘Wylm. Kempe’ was ‘kenge’ and ‘Joan Whytebrede’ was ‘quen.’ In 1513 and again in 1536 the game went to Croydon[592]. Similarly the accounts of New Romney note that in 1422 or thereabouts the men of Lydd ‘came with their may and ours[593],’ and those of Reading St. Lawrence that in 1505 came ‘Robyn Hod of Handley and his company’ and in 1507 ‘Robyn Hod and his company from ffynchamsted[594].’ In contemporary Scotland James IV gave a present at midsummer in 1503 ‘to Robin Hude of Perth[595].’ It would hardly have been worth while, however, to carry the May-game from one village or town to another, had it been nothing but a procession with a garland and a ‘gaderyng’; and as a matter of fact we find that in England as in France dramatic performances came to be associated with the summer folk-festivals. The London ‘Maying’ included stage plays[596]. At Shrewsbury _lusores_ under the Abbot of Marham acted interludes ‘for the glee of the town’ at Pentecost[597]. The guild of St. Luke at Norwich performed secular as well as miracle plays, and the guild of Holy Cross at Abingdon held its feast on May 3 with ‘pageants, plays and May-games,’ as early as 1445[598]. Some of these plays were doubtless miracles, but so far as they were secular, the subjects of them were naturally drawn, in the absence of _pastourelles_, from the ballads of the Robin Hood cycle[599]. Amongst the Paston letters is preserved one written in 1473, in which the writer laments the loss of a servant, whom he has kept ‘thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Nottyngham[600].’ Moreover, some specimens of the plays themselves are still extant. One of them, unfortunately only a fragment, must be the very play referred to in the letter just quoted, for its subject is ‘Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham,’ and it is found on a scrap of paper formerly in the possession of Sir John Fenn, the first editor of the _Paston Letters_[601]. A second play on ‘Robin Hood and the Friar’ and a fragment of a third on ‘Robin Hood and the Potter’ were printed by Copland in the edition of the _Gest of Robyn Hode_ published by him about 1550[602]. The Robin Hood plays are, of course, subsequent to the development of religious drama which will be discussed in the next volume. They are of the nature of